It's funny how Republicans claim unions give orders of magnitude more money to Democrats than corporations ever did, yet balk when asked to reverse Citizens United, which opened up the spigots for both.

A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a Big Corp CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the tea partier and says, "Look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie."

vygramul:It's funny how Republicans claim unions give orders of magnitude more money to Democrats than corporations ever did, yet balk when asked to reverse Citizens United, which opened up the spigots for both.

They continually argue for uneven playing fields on every topic.

Take Freedom of Religion. Inclusivity of all beliefs is somehow exclusive of Christians.

Opening up influence peddling for all organizations somehow infringes on corporations' ability to peddle influence.

I'd suggest complete public financing of elections, with a set amount for each level of office, free radio/tv time (as part of station licensure in the public interest) and 3 debates for all registered candidates, and no extra donations at all, whether corporate or union or self or otherwise. All primaries take place by mail-in/drop off ballot over the same one week period nationwide. But I'm sure both sides will yowl about all this, so vote Green.

Sudo_Make_Me_A_Sandwich:A public corporation's legal obligation is to turn a profit. A CEO has fiduciary duty to the company's stock. In contrast, a union is entrusted with ensuring the rights of people are protected.

To be fair, a union is a non-profit organization, which simply means a different kind of tax assessment and standard. They too must generate a fund surplus from which to draw upon to pay salaries, negotiators, continuance and legal counsel. A union president has fiduciary duty to her dues-paying members to look out for their interests, just as public corporations look out for their shareholders' interest.

Somacandra: A union president has fiduciary duty to her dues-paying members to look out for their interests, just as public corporations look out for their shareholders' interest.

Right. But lets so I go buy stock in Target. I'm not contributing anything to the company, making it a better company. I'm trading around a pieces of paper for other pieces of paper. Yet the CEO's responsibility is now legally to me, *not to his employees* except to the extend that an employee owns stock. That's fundamentally different from a union whose responsibility is to the dues-paying members that make it up.

Somacandra:I'd suggest complete public financing of elections, with a set amount for each level of office, free radio/tv time (as part of station licensure in the public interest) and 3 debates for all registered candidates, and no extra donations at all, whether corporate or union or self or otherwise.

I've always thought this was a good way to curb the undue influence that the big-money players have over American politics. Personally, I would like to see the elimination and outlawing of political parties as well. Make our elected officials and our voting public decide on issues based upon their merit, not on who paid you the most to vote for or against something or on what your party leadership wants. I realize that would require critical thinking skills for all involved and would force people to form their own opinions, which is clearly too hard. It seems like we're just too intellectually lazy for anything other than the cliffs notes version of democracy.

vygramul:It's funny how Republicans claim unions give orders of magnitude more money to Democrats than corporations ever did, yet balk when asked to reverse Citizens United, which opened up the spigots for both.

Exactly.

Then they whine about oh, but if we can't have contributions, then it means only rich people who can pay millions of dollars out of their own pockets can afford to run for office (as IF this isn't already a problem now anyway).

Somacandra:I'd suggest complete public financing of elections, with a set amount for each level of office, free radio/tv time (as part of station licensure in the public interest) and 3 debates for all registered candidates, and no extra donations at all, whether corporate or union or self or otherwise. All primaries take place by mail-in/drop off ballot over the same one week period nationwide. But I'm sure both sides will yowl about all this, so vote Green.

BillCo:There seems to be a lot of people who don't understand a basic principle of economics:

When you increase the cost to a company to produce a good or provide a service, they pass that cost along to the consumer!

Raise tax rates on companies - you will pay more for their products.

Give workers a raise (union or not) - you will pay more for their products.

Why do you want to increase your cost of living?

Is this a troll?

The percentage of a tax that is passed on to the consumer by a corporation is determined by relative supply and demand elasticities in the market for that particular good. If you're interested, start here (new window).

As for workers, an increase in their wages will cause a short-term increase in the 'price' of the good they produce. However, the medium-long term picture may be quite different, depending on the higher wage's ability to attract more productive employees.

And that's not even touching the fact that there may be good reasons to tax corporations or raise wages, even if prices increase. You might be motivated by a sense of fairness, concern for rights (the right to free association, say, in the context of unions), you might desire a more equitable distribution of resources, or the increase in "costs" might have non-financial benefits (environmental regulations, for example).

Somacandra:I'd suggest complete public financing of elections, with a set amount for each level of office, free radio/tv time (as part of station licensure in the public interest) and 3 debates for all registered candidates, and no extra donations at all, whether corporate or union or self or otherwise.

Why? If you want to level the playing field, you don't have to truck dirt in from outside. You can spread around what's already there.

1. All donations go to the Federal Election Commission, where the donor and amount are recorded and posted in real time. This includes donations candidates give to themselves (no fair buying the election through a loophole).

2. A set percentage of each donation is deposited in the candidate's account, with the remainder spread evenly among all candidates for the office and the FEC. (I'm throwing in the Federal Election Commission into the mix, because this way they have an incentive to aggressively monitor things, and can be largely self-funded.) This is the only money that can be used for election-related expenses, and any funds that remain after the election are prorated and given back to donors.

For example, if Candidate A and B are running for Senator, and someone cuts a check for $1000 to Candidate A, the Federal Election Commission cashes the check, puts a portion of the money into Candidate A's account, and then divides the remainder evenly between A, B, and itself. Just set the percentage to be split by law before the election.

That way, taxpayer's aren't required to cough up money if they hate everyone in the race. Plus, you can throw the donations wide open -- it doesn't matter if a foreign corporation dumps ten million dollars into a race, because everyone knows who is giving how much as soon as the check hits, and you can set the division very aggressively (say, 50% goes directly to a candidate, with the remaining 50% spread evenly among all candidates and the FEC).

GAT_00:Per Open Secrets: Labor was the source of 5% of all contributions in 2010. Business interests contributed 71.6%.

Can we stop listening to Republicans and pretending that unions are some massive spending source?

Funny how you left this out even though it's on the page you cite: Business contributions tend to be overstated. Because CRP uses employer/occupation information to categorize donors, and because just about everyone works for a business, contributions from members of labor unions and ideological groups are often classified under business.

BullBearMS:GAT_00: Per Open Secrets: Labor was the source of 5% of all contributions in 2010. Business interests contributed 71.6%.

Can we stop listening to Republicans and pretending that unions are some massive spending source?

Funny how you left this out even though it's on the page you cite: Business contributions tend to be overstated. Because CRP uses employer/occupation information to categorize donors, and because just about everyone works for a business, contributions from members of labor unions and ideological groups are often classified under business.

Now look at open secrets list of the largest donors of all time and notice how it's dominated by Unions.

So donations from individuals outweigh the donations of companies as a whole? I didn't know that a single person, who is limited to $2400, I think, can massively outspend the corporation that has no limit and regularly donate on the order of 6 figures.

Here's what Open Secrets had to say on the matter in their mailbag Q&A feature.

QUESTION: How do you explain the power the corporations have, yet as a whole donate less than the labor unions? In other words, who is more politically powerful -- labor unions or corporations? -- Mary from Phoenix, Ariz.

TenaciousP:A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a Big Corp CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the tea partier and says, "Look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie."

Good analogy. Sad that this works so often. (You can switch tea partier out for just about any group that can be convinced that the people on his level are more of a threat than the cookie snatchers.)

If you don't think unions when you think "big money" in a conversation on campaign contributions, then I'm kind of curious how you remember to breathe at any given moment.

And yeah, in my own opinion, ban anything but contributions from individuals. Banding together for group protection is all well and good, but allowing people to directly buy politicians with other people's money is bullshiat and our current USSC is a bunch of assholes for encouraging it. Unions, corporations, whatever, cut that nonsense off.

Yeah, 'cause when AFSCME drops a mere $87,500,000 on an election cycle (over $50 per member), that doesn't have any effect on anything. Or anyone. Certainly not like the $34,000 the Koch brothers threw at Gov. Walker, which pretty much bought him off completely.

Not thinking "big money" when you think "union" makes you a foolish rube who cannot possibly fathom what's at stake in Wisconsin. It's not even the collective bargaining. It's the forced dues. That threatens the lifeblood of the unions and, in turn, the Democrats they buy vote for.

Professor Moe found that in the school-board races he researched, incumbency boosted a candidate's reelection chances by 47 percent. Union support boosted the odds by 56 percent. The combination of union support and incumbency boosted the odds by 76 percent

School boards? Your using a study of local school board elections to prove that unions are destroying state economies? Did you not do a study into mayoral elections or dogcatchers?

In many school-board races, the raw number of union members' votes was significantly greater than the margin of electoral victory, meaning that a union-disciplined bureaucrats' bloc could have, by itself, determined the outcome (and in many elections probably did).At the state and local levels, unions run the show. They run it financially, and run it by turning out at the polls.

Again with the local school boards. Guess you didn't do that dogcatcher study. Also, how dare those damn unions convince large numbers of their members to vote. Isn't union members voting illegal or something?

Teachers and school employees voting and working in the same district have a very strong interest in seeing particular candidates elected and policies enacted - and in seeing reformers and reform initiatives stopped.

My mom's a teacher. She has never voted becuase of some person's reform initiatives. The simple reason is that the same initiatives keep coming up every 5 or ten years. She primarily votes for the guy who's less of an asshole.

I will put this as simply as possible so the libbo creeps can wrap their drug-addled brains around it:

Can someone tell me why we NEED collective bargaining rights? Only about 13% of gov't workers and ~7% of private sector employees are covered by unions. If Unions are so great why are they becoming extinct?

If Unions "protect the middle class" how do they do it? Why do we need to protect this small segment of working society when the overwhelming majority of us aren't a part of it?

This is my fifth time asking you libs what ought to be a very, very simple question. Why do we have unions? Why DON'T we follow the trend and erase them completely?

birdboy2000:I'm fine with barring union contributions if corporate ones are barred too. Repealing Citizens' United via constitutional amendment would be a great step forward for this country.

But since the right supports it, I'll support unions, so that at least there's a counterweight to corporate power.

Public employee unions are not a counterweight to corporate power. UMW? Yeah, I'll give you that. UAW? Certainly used to be, though its current status is a little murky. But public sector unions are only a "counterweight" to your ability to act collectively with your neighbor. Which doesn't exist. Here's the thing you need to understand: they've won because they're organized and you (the one they're negotiating with) are not. Remember, you bargain with them through appointed (sometimes, elected) intermediaries whose interests are more aligned with them than with you.

Eliminating collective bargaining doesn't level the playing field, but it's a step in the right direction.

And when it does you can create the Unions system again. If you think the electorate will let you get away with it. But I don't think you do. That's why you can't bear to see them shiat-canned like yesterday's newspaper.

You KNOW once they're gone no libbo creep will ever be able to elucidate a compelling public policy argument for their resurrection. Gone for good like your pride.

vygramul:It's funny how Republicans claim unions give orders of magnitude more money to Democrats than corporations ever did, yet balk when asked to reverse Citizens United, which opened up the spigots for both.

Because those poor corporations never get a break. The real power is in the hands of middle class public employees.